Memorization
by Bunnybell
Summary: The study of chemistry involves a good deal of memorization... and not just for learning purposes. One never knows when their knowledge will be tested. Gibson-centric oneshot.


Has this section died like its respective cartoon has? I used to come here all the time back when SRMTHG! still aired on normal cable. (I would watch it at like 6am as I got ready for work.)

It was during that time that I got an idea for an "OMGEEZE EPIC!!" story. It was going to be called "Looks Can Be Deceiving", and was a story about how the Team underestimated some new aliens and how Nova underestimated Sparx. (Admit it; Sparx/Nova is CUTE.)

…it was indeed quite epic, but in like two years I only got like 15 pages of random fragments done. I've given up on ever fully writing it, but some pieces were decently well written so… Well, I salvaged one of my favorite pieces and turned it into this. Hope you like it.

Everything belongs to… Disney and Ci… Ce… Guy with the intials C.N. whose name I can say but no longer remember how to spell. p (It's been two years, please forgive me.)

--

Gibson's eyes were two black glittering coals in the dim light suddenly provided by an opening door. He tried to give the blob of silhouettes in the doorway his best spiteful glare, but as they walked in he felt his body betray him and begin to shake. Fighting the urge to shrink into as small of a ball as possible, Gibson analyzed the newcomers. The first was a tall female. She looked uninterested and slightly displeased about what she'd come to do. The second one was shorter and stockier and obviously male. His eyes were glued to Gibson, almost daring him to try something. This one was obviously sent along as a bodyguard. The third one Gibson recognized. She was smaller, had mauve hair, and two days ago she sat at a computer next to his. She knew no English except for his name, and she'd spent all day cheerfully shouting "Gippon!" and pulling his tail. (Another alien translated later that she thought his tail was cute.) Today, she was much different. She had only come halfway through the door before stopping, and looked positively horrified. Gibson made a mental note to keep an eye on her. If he could get her to help him…

The first alien interrupted his thoughts.

"Help gnnpy friend. Want look… want look in gnnnpy. Gnnpy many loud. Help gnnpy friend no loud."

He assumed "gnnpy" was a bad pronunciation of "monkey". They were talking about Nova.

"Nova is being loud?" he thought out loud.

The alien did not understand him, of course, but knew what his confused stare meant. Resorting to charades, she made a cutting gesture down her body.

"Want look _in_," she repeated.

Vivisection. And Nova was screaming.

Gibson leaped at her with a speed and ferocity he never knew he possessed. The shackles covering his hands made it so he could not use his drills, but as far as he was concerned biting through her neck was just as good as drilling through.

He was just close enough to taste her orange fur when all of a sudden he was slammed face first into the ground. Temporarily stunned by the flash of pain, he was unable to stop the second alien from wrapping him up in tentacles. He could not move. He felt himself get hoisted upright, and he struggled.

"What are you doing to her?!" he bellowed. "Let her go!! If you hurt her…" Too upset to form words, he simply screeched at her.

A tentacle snaked around his neck and pressed down hard, blocking his windpipe. Caught off guard, Gibson gagged.

The first alien hadn't twitched at all during the attack. She glared at Gibson and asked, "Want help gnnpy friend, yes?"

He was going to be sick. It was hard to breathe and he was getting lightheaded and the entire room was spinning and…

There was a grating noise. Gibson looked up and saw a small metal cage being dragged into his room by another alien. It had thick gray bars which Gibson couldn't help but notice looked bent in a few places. Two bars in particular looked like someone had tried to melt them….

Gibson felt himself retch and he began to fight back harder. The alien holding him cut off his airway further, but he did not stop struggling. Even when little lights started to swim in his vision, he did not stop. That cage was… that cage was…

Gibson groaned. He could feel cold metal on his back. Was he in the cage? How did he get here? He must've blacked out for a second. Everything was still swimming and his head was pounding mercilessly. The room seemed much brighter than it had before. He closed his eyes against the harsh light.

He could not, however, close his nose, and his sense of smell confirmed his suspicion: Nova had been in this cage. Had been in this cage and nearly killed herself trying to force her way out. Every bent iron bar reeked of her sweat and her anger. Gibson rolled over on his side and coughed. His throat hurt and felt like it had swollen shut. Despite this, he felt like he was going to start sobbing or get violently sick. Unable to choose between the two, his body went numb.

"Gippon," said a quiet voice.

Gibson cracked open one eye and saw his small alien friend standing outside the cage. She was alone.

"Gippon," she said again, and Gibson noticed she was close to tears. One of her tentacles snaked boldly into his cage and patted his arm.

Sympathetic to his cause or not, Gibson felt an urge to attack her. It was not a strong urge, however, because he did not have the energy or the coordination to do so. She would be able to get her tentacle out of the cage faster than he could grab it.

Another tentacle went through the bars; this one was holding something. She set it down next to him on the floor. Lying on his side, Gibson could not see what it was. His curiosity got the better of him. He slowly tried to sit up.

It looked like paper. Outside of the cage, the alien had an identical sheet on the floor in front of her. She held up what resembled a charcoal stick, and drew a big black line across the top of her paper.

"Gippon?" she asked.

"I—" Gibson coughed as he tried to speak. "I… I can write," he croaked.

The alien did not understand him, as always. He held his hand out, gesturing that he wanted charcoal. She smiled, and handed him a stick.

What was he supposed to do? He watched as the alien began to draw on her paper. She drew six funny curlicue shapes, and connected them with lines to form a hexagon. Every other side, she drew a double line. Seemingly finished, she looked up at him. When he didn't say anything, she poked at her drawing and garbled a question in her strange language.

Gibson was lost, and she appeared to understand that. She poked at one of the curlicue symbols and then drew it again further down her page. This time, she made a cross of lines around it, and drew four smaller symbols at the end of each line. Next, she drew two of the big symbols connected, with three smalle—

"It's carbon!" Gibson exclaimed. She was drawing carbon structures! The first one was a benzene ring, the second was methane, and the third was butane. To show he understood, he wrote the next two structures (propane and pentane) on his paper, only he put C's and H's in the place of her funny symbols.

The alien gurgled happily. She nodded and tapped her head, which Gibson took to mean she thought he was smart. Going back to her paper, she drew a much more complicated structure. There were a few new symbols added to the mix this time, and Gibson groaned. It would be difficult to figure out which symbols corresponded to which element.

…wait. Why were they having a chemistry lesson anyway? As if on cue, the alien reached behind herself and pulled out a small jar. It was made of clear glass, so Gibson could see the white pellets inside, but she nonetheless handed the jar to him so he could examine it. She pointed at the jar, opened her mouth and pretended to swallow, and then gave a huge smile and began to sway like she was going to fall over.

A rush of realization hit Gibson hard. The white pellets in the jar were an analgesic, and she had drawn the structure of it on her paper. These aliens wanted a way to keep Nova quiet while th— Gibson swallowed back an upsurge of bile forcefully— They didn't want her to feel whatever it was they were doing to her. The alien painkillers must not have been effective. It only made sense, seeing how different their two species were.

They wanted to be at least a little more humane, and they needed his help. His charcoal flew across the paper.

_Aspirin, paracetamol..._

If he could help Nova, even a little bit…

_Morphine, codeine..._

True, chemistry was his forte, but pharmaceutical chemistry was not. Being robots, he and his fellow monkeys needed a mechanic often than they needed a doctor.

_Oxycodone, hydrocodone..._

…and what medicine they did use was usually bought, not synthesized. He could retrosynthesize a few of these, but if he didn't have the structure correct…

_...Hydrocodone_..._?_

_Is… is this bond cis or trans? I don't… know how to draw the Fisher Projection…_

_It's… I think it's…_

_I can't just guess! If it's wrong, then Nova…Nova…_

--

Gibson jerked awake, immediately noticing a sharp pain in his neck and something heavy draped over him. He flailed and, getting more tangled and disoriented, fell off of what turned out to be a chair. It was the same chair he'd been sitting in for the better part of a week; it seemed as though somebody had thought to get him a blanket when he fell asleep in it rather than risk waking him by moving him.

_Hydrocodone._

In his haste to get out of the blanket, Gibson was sure he heard it rip. He didn't care. He ran.

_Hydrocodone._

He couldn't see straight, and kept bumping into furniture. When he finally reached his lab, his body made a "splat!" noise against the door. To panicked to even think straight, he pounded on the metal. It wouldn't open. On the verge of ramming his whole body into it, he remembered the keypad; the door was locked with a passkey.

_Hydrocodone._

It took two tries for his shaky fingers to input the correct sequence of numbers. Once the door opened, he charged in. He crashed into the wall next to his bookcase, and began to blindly pull books off the shelves. They fell with heavy thumps, opening, scattering, the paper pooling around him.

_Hydrocodone._

A flash of red caught his eye; he fumbled for it, and caught the book clumsily against his chest. Setting it down on the messy pile in front of him, he tore through it looking for…

_Hydrocodone_!

It was exactly as he remembered it… and more importantly, exactly as he had written down on his sheet of paper in that cage.

His breaths, which had been coming in short little gasps, slowed. They kept slowing until they turned into long, quiet sobs. He clung to his book like it was the key to the universe and at the same time fought a mad, burning desire to tear it in two.

"Gibson, is that—? Gibson!"

The voice and the sound of bare, human feet slapping on the metal floor identified the speaker: Chiro. Gibson wanted to yell at him that he shouldn't be up yet, but he couldn't get the words out over his crying.

"Gibson… what…?"

He felt Chiro tugging at the book, and resisted. But Chiro was bigger than he was; it wasn't hard for Chiro to wrap his arms around both monkey and book.

"Gibson, calm down… it's okay…"

"No!" he coughed, choking on a sob. "N-nova… they… We h-have to find…"

She was still out there somewhere. These last few days he'd been searching—no, _scouring_ this solar system for her escape pod. The aliens had to be searching too, though, so it was only a matter of time before the wrong pair met.

Gibson dropped his book. "I… I h-have to… computer…"

"No."

"But—"

"_No_. You need to sleep."

"I don't—"

"Gibson!" Chiro barked, "This is the third time you've gone tearing through this book! You can't keep going on like this!"

"Yes I can," Gibson wailed. "I-I have to, f-for Nova! We have to find—"

Chiro pulled him closer, trying both to stop him from leaving and hug him. "She's with Sparx. You know Sparx; he can fly _anything_. I'm sure he got their escape pod away to somewhere safe, and is taking good care of Nova."

"You don't know that!" Gibson countered. "You didn't… didn't see her…"

He felt Chiro's arms tense. "I was… on that ship too, you know." His voice sounded strained. "But… I saw her when we were escaping. I saw her running. If she can run, then she can't be too bad, right?"

Gibson shook his head vigorously, flinging tears left and right. "Y-you ran t-too, and you were h-half dead."

"I was fine."

"No you weren't!" Gibson nearly screamed. "You were stuck in Hyper Mode for three days!"

"Three?" Chiro gasped. "But you said—"

"I lied! You were unconscious because had so many foreign substances in your bloodstream. I… I couldn't risk giving you anything, but at the same time you were having withdrawal symptoms, and… I couldn't do anything! You were _dying_, Chiro, and I didn't know how to save you!"

Chiro was silent.

"It was Antauri who saved you," Gibson continued. "He connected with the Power Primate in you and somehow reverted you back to normal… the shock of which, might I add, made you go into cardiac arrest."

"…really?" Chiro breathed.

"C-Chiro…" Gibson spun around in Chiro's arms and threw his own metallic arms around the boy. He buried his face in Chiro's shoulder and sobbed. "I t-thought…. I thought I'd lost you…"

Chiro returned the hug, but it seemed like a reflex more than a desire to comfort.

"I don't… want a-anyone…" Gibson choked. "I c-can't lose Nova. I-if I can f-find her… I can save her."

"Gibson," Chiro's grip tightened in a calming manner, "you can't find her if _you're_ dead. Stop worrying about everyone else and worry about _yourself_ for once! You need to sleep."

"I keep telling you I can't!!" Gibson roared into the blue pajamas. "What if when we find Sparx… what if Nova is dead and I could have done something if we'd gotten there sooner?!"

He would never be able to forgive himself for something like that. Hell, he was the one who had _found_ these aliens, opened a communications channel... All of this was his fault. All of it. He didn't deserve to sleep; when he did doze off, he more than deserved the nightmares.

"That… that won't happen. I'm sure Nova is fine. It's okay, Gibson." Chiro rubbed Gibson's back in small, reassuring circles, but his words sounded hollow. "It's okay… we'll find them."

"A-and if… we don't?" Gibson asked.

Chiro hugged him tighter but said nothing; it was hard to talk when you were crying.


End file.
